Glamorous green tea soap

For those of you wanting to inject a bit of instant glamour to your bathroom or washroom, you’ll love today’s melt-and-pour soap-crafting project! With added powdered green tea – for gentle exfoliation – and lightly scented with bergamot and atlas cedarwood essential oils, this shimmery, marble-like soap guarantees to impress. And, requiring only five ingredients, it really couldn’t be easier to make!

Ingredients

200g clear SLS-free melt and pour soap

1g green tea powder

a pinch of orange/gold mica

3g (approx. 60 drops) bergamot (bergaptene-free) essential oil

1g (approx. 20 drops) atlas cedarwood essential oil

For a more transparent soap, use less green tea powder. For a more golden looking soap, add more mica. Also, it’s worth bearing in mind that the colour of your soaps will vary depending on the brand of green tea powder you use.

The above will make 3 square soaps of around 65g each (using a square cavity mould, with each cavity measuring 5cm x 5cm x 2cm).

Steps

Cut the M&P soap into cubes. Place them in a heatproof measuring jug and melt in a microwave (in two to three 15-second bursts).

Take the jug out of the microwave, and carefully place it in a saucepan filled one-third with hot water simmering over a stove on low heat.

Gently stir the mixture, taking care to ensure it doesn’t boil or start to bubble (if it does, turn off the heat).

Once the soap base has melted completely, take the measuring jug out of the saucepan and dry its base. Leave to cool for a minute or two, but keep stirring the mixture so it doesn’t harden.

Once the mixture has cooled down (i.e. the jug is warm but not hot to touch – and the mixture should still be liquid), add in the green tea powder and mica. Stir to mix everything together, and watch as the tea powder and mica stain the liquid soap base. Spray a bit of rubbing alcohol into the mixture to stop the powders from clumping together. (Note: don’t expect the tea powder and the mica to fully dissolve in the soap base; they just remain suspended in the soap base.)

Now add in the essential oils, and give the mixture a final stir.

Carefully but quickly, pour the mixture into your moulds.

Spray rubbing alcohol on top of each soap to burst any bubbles forming inside the soap.

Leave the soap to set in the moulds for 4 hours. Be patient! (If you have a food cover, you can use it to cover the moulds, to prevent dust from sticking to the soaps while they’re setting.)

Carefully, pop the soaps out by inverting the moulds.

For a touch of extra glamour, you can turn your soap into a multi-faceted gemstone by randomly cutting out small slices from around the edges of the soap.

Wrap your soaps in clingfilm straight away to keep them fresh.

Powdered green tea

Here’s a thinly sliced piece of soap – notice how the powders are suspended

The colour of the finished product does vary depending on the brand and quality of green tea powder you use – mine ended up being more brown than green – but whatever the colour, I think it goes well with the gold mica

To turn your soap into a gemstone, just slice the edges off a square piece of soap